Take fine juicy acid apples; pare, core, and cut them into small
pieces. Have ready a deep dish that has been lined with paste. Fill it
with the apples; strewing among them layers of brown sugar, and adding
the rind of a lemon pared thin, and also the juice squeezed in, or
some essence of lemon. Put on another sheet of paste as a lid; close
the edges well, and notch them. Bake the pie in a moderate oven, about
three quarters of an hour. Eat it with cream and sugar, or with cold
boiled custard.
If the pie is made of early green apples, they should first be stewed
with a very little water, and then plenty of sugar stirred in while
they are hot.
What are called sweet apples are entirely unfit for cooking, as they
become tough and tasteless; and it is almost impossible to get them
sufficiently done.
When you put stewed apples into baked shells, grate nutmeg over the
top. You may cover them with cream whipped to a stiff froth, and heaped
on them.
Cranberries and gooseberries should be stewed, and sweetened before
they are put into paste; peaches cut in half or quartered, and the
stones removed. The stones of cherries and plums should also be
extracted.
Raspberries or strawberries, mixed with cream and white sugar, may be
put raw into baked shells.
RHUBARB TARTS.--Take the young green stalks of the rhubarb plant, or
spring fruit as it is called in England; and having peeled off the
thin skin, cut the stalks into small pieces about an inch long, and
put them into a sauce-pan with plenty of brown sugar, and its own
juice. Cover it, and let it stew slowly till it is soft enough to mash
to a marmalade. Then set it away to cool. Have ready some fresh baked
shells; fill them with the stewed rhubarb, and grate white sugar over
the top.
For covered pies, cut the rhubarb very small; mix a great deal of sugar
with it, and put it in raw. Bake the pies about three quarters of an
hour.